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A chief performance officer shares how he balances digitisation and human connection for long-term success.
In a recent episode of Real Estate Business’ Secrets of the Top 100 Agents, Stone Real Estate’s Graeme Hyde shared his tips on how to use technology – and how not to use it – for sustainable client relationships.
For Mr Hyde, real estate is a people business. Throughout his extensive three-decade career, the executive has worked towards “a client for life process, where you always look after the people, you look after their kids when they have kids, and their kids when they have kids.”
“That’s the way real estate should work,” Mr Hyde stressed, “not a sale in 30 days.”
In today’s complex post-COVID world, digital communication can be an effective tool for forging these long-term relationships – but Mr Hyde warns against treating technology as a cure-all.
He noted that some agents see social media advertising, for instance, as “something that you can do quite easily and quickly, and it takes care of itself, and it takes care of you.”
“Well, it doesn’t,” he warned.
Mr Hyde suggested that social media is one tool in a wide arsenal of other tools – both digital and traditional – that can help in “nurturing relationships with people over long periods of time.”
For weary clients who have “been texted, Zoomed, and Teamsed to death over the last three or four years,” Mr Hyde suggested that the simple act of “picking up the phone” and speaking to them directly can go a long way in building a meaningful client relationship.
At the same time, Mr Hyde warned against being a Luddite when it comes to new communications technologies. He identified virtual tours, livestreams, video calls, and digital floor plans as developments that have all “made the world a smaller place when it comes to real estate.”
In the future, the chief performance officer predicts that real estate professionals will see effective business units (EBUs) replacing traditional office structures, with “a pod of three or four people” each of whom has a different delegated role.
He foretold that this EBU structure would largely supplant the need for “a full shopfront on every street corner.”
“I think there’s some really exciting opportunities ahead,” he said.
Listen to the full conversation with Mr Hyde here.
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